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Martyr! is the debut novel from poet Kaveh Akbar. As you might expect, the language, the sentences, and the ideas are all exciting and vividly rendered with an intense musicality. This quality allows the novel to strike a fine balance: it is both a thoughtful novel of serious ideas and a propulsive intellectual romp. We’re overjoyed to feature it as one of our Picks of the Month.

The characters interact with and refer to music and musicians in myriad ways throughout, and we’re overjoyed to have, direct from the author himself, a playlist featuring all the music and musicians from the book...